


Pieces of Mind

by Fyre



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Insanity, Reunions, Wonderland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-14
Updated: 2012-04-14
Packaged: 2017-11-03 15:22:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/pseuds/Fyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a madness in solitude and Jefferson is very familiar with it, but when someone comes knocking at his door with bloodied feet and trembling hands, he finds himself getting dragged back into the world by someone as mad as him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pieces of Mind

**Author's Note:**

> This story came sneaking up on me unexpectedly, and I've been writing it steadily for nearly a week. I'm not the biggest Jefferson fan, but I'm awfully fond of how this story turned out.

Jefferson knows he’s not sane.

No one who has lived twenty-eight years in limbo could ever be sane. No one who has made seven-hundred and fifty-three thousand, eight hundred and seventy-nine and a half hats in Wonderland could remotely be considered sane. No one who watches their stolen child through a telescope from the dark, dark woods could try to be sane.

He finds that routine helps keep the worst of the madness at bay.

Every morning, there is toast. It’s cut into twelve even bread soldiers. It has to be twelve, for the division of the minutes and hours and days. Twelve is a suitable number. It’s a good number for measurements and breadth as well. It’s efficient. There is an egg, softboiled, and he chops off it’s head. Solidarity. He puts the head back on and lets it cool, and watches the yellow ooze through the line separating head from body.

He doesn’t have coffee. Coffee makes him crazy.

He has tea. Always tea. Grace’s tea was always far better than his, but he still drinks it all the same and remembers her. It’s much more significant than a glass of wine raised in memory. It is sweet and bitter and sometimes, he finds himself curled over the cup and trembling. It should be calming, but it never is.

Once breakfast is done, he cleans. He cleans to ignore the telescope for a little while. He is always up earlier than her, and if he looks before seven o’clock, he only sees the man pretending to be her father in the window, and that’s too much like pain.

He watches for a while before she goes to school. She’s happy, and that’s a small mercy, even if she’s happy far, far away from him. He gathers each of her smiles like flowers and presses them together in the worn and faded book of his memory.

When she is at school, he can’t see her, not from home, and he can’t stand to leave the house, to let the world batter him with it’s wrongness. So he works on hats. More hats. He hates hats. He always has, even before. But now, he hates them more than anything. He hates the blood on his fingertips, when the needles slip. He hates the smell of it. He hates the feel of the fabric which whispers lies, murmuring it can give him back what he wants.

That is his life. 

Breakfast. Grace. Hats. Tea. Hats. Lunch. Hats. Grace. Dinner. Grace. Hats. Hats. Hats. Bed.

That’s why the knock at his door is a surprise. 

He’s halfway between making a hat and towards elevenses, and the sun is shining through the windows. It’s a beautiful day. Someone is battering on his door. It was a knock at first, as if they were civilised, but now, it’s desperate and pounding.

Jefferson sits in silence. No one visits, and anyone who does usually goes away.

This person is uncommonly persistent. They rap on the windows, they ring the bell, they rattle the knocker.

Finally, Jefferson sets down the hat, unfinished, and descends the stairs. He can see a face peeping through the window beside the door, with large staring eyes framed by dark hair. A woman. Thin, frail, staring. She looks as mad as he feels every morning, and that intrigues him. He can’t approach sane people, because they’re too stupid to understand what he knows, but a mad person might converse like a sensible human being.

He only hesitates a moment before opening the door.

The woman, barely more than a girl, holds out trembling and grazed hands. “Please, may I come in?” she asks.

He looks at her. She’s dressed in clothes he’s seen in television shows. Scrubs. Hospital wear. Oh, good! A genuinely insane person! That’s quite refreshing. Her feet are bare, and he can see blood on his steps, and her arms and hands are covered with scratches. She has run through the woods in scrubs and barefoot. That speaks of a wonderful amount of madness, and he can feel the smile on his lips before he thinks it.

“Of course,” he says. “You look exhausted.”

He leads her into the house, and considers her. Manners dictates that guests don’t leave blood in the parlour, so he ushers her to a bathroom. “Take your time,” he says. “There’s a robe there, and the water will be hot. Would you like a cup of tea?”

She stares at him, as if he’s mad, which is quite fitting. “Don’t you want to know who I am?”

He offers a little bow. “A gentleman always makes a lady comfortable before asking the awkward questions,” he says. “I can tell you’re not a serial killer, and I won’t be massacred in my bed, because you don’t have a chainsaw.”

She laughs, softly, uncertainly, surprised. “No. No, I left it in my other outfit,” she says, her face creasing with confusion but with relief. Her smile is hesitant. “Thank you. Really.”

He waves her into the bathroom. “Clean,” he says, “then we’ll have tea and you can tell me all about your serial killing ways and I will tell you all about the magic of Wonderland.”

Her face is suddenly white and she’s looking at him with a sharp focus that makes him take a step back. Her blue eyes search his face, and she nods, and the door of the bathroom closes on her. He hears the lock.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Even thinking that makes him roll his eyes.

He goes to the kitchen and sets about arranging a tea party for his guest that would make Grace dance with delight.

It seems to be a busy day in the woods. There’s another knock at the door, this one less frantic, two sharp knocks. He leaves the tea to brew in the kitchen, and makes his way to the door. He recognises the silhouette through the glass before he even touches the handle.

Regina, the bitch, the witch, the troll, the liar, the traitor. 

He opens the door and smiles at her like he doesn’t want to tear her throat out with his bare hands. “Madam Mayor,” he says. “How nice to see you.”

“Mr Jeffreys.”

They’re both lying, he knows. She has to remember, because she’s just that much of a witch, and he remembers because he’s that much of a fool. She remembers, and he remembers, but neither of them wants to show the cards, which are already facing the wrong way.

“How can I help you?”

She folds her hands and smiles like a liar. “There was an incident at the hospital,” she said, “I’m afraid one of the patients got a little… upset and ran out into the woods. She was seen heading this way. She really needs to be back, where she can be looked after.”

“Sorry,” Jefferson says, smiling like an idiot. “Haven’t seen her.”

Regina looks at him, then looks down at the wooden steps. There’s bloody footprints there, leading up to the door. She looks at the door and the windows and the smears of blood there as well, then raises her eyebrow in challenge, daring him to lie to her.

Turn about is fair play.

“Looks like an injured rabbit came this way,” he says, tilts his head, smiles. 

“A rabbit,” she echoes. She taps her foot against one of the bare foot prints. “This is a rabbit?”

“They’re big, this time of year,” he says. “Sorry I can’t help.”

He starts to close the door, but she holds it. “I know she came here.”

Jefferson leans closer to her, until he can taste the chilly mint of her breath, until he can feel the flush of her skin. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he whispers, “but this is private property, and if you want to come in here, you’ll have to go to the Sheriff and get a search warrant.”

Pawn takes Queen.

He knows the fury in her eyes and knows there’s not a damn thing she can do about it. He smiles like he’s an asshole, and she presses her lips together until they’re almost gone, and it’s checkmate. She won’t go to the Sheriff. The Sheriff won’t know about escapees from the hospital, especially not if they’re the Queen’s. 

“Good afternoon, Madam Mayor,” he says, and slams the door in her face. 

He can see her standing there for a moment, as if she can’t believe he’s defying her. The daughter-thief should know she will never ever get any help from him again. She turns and walks away, and he wonders if she’s set fire to the porch. That’s what he knows he would do in her stead.

“Is she gone?”

He spins around, startled. He had almost forgotten the reason the witch was there in the first place.

The woman, girl, person is standing there, half-hidden by the stairs. Her hair is wet and she’s wrapped in a robe. She looks pale and scared, like she half-expects him to present her as a washed and cleaned gift to the bitch. 

“She’s gone,” he says. “She said you were in the hospital.”

“She says a lot of things,” the woman says quietly, and Jefferson likes her at once. Speaking in riddles is only fun if your conversation partner is playing too. She folds her arms around her middle, as if she’s holding herself together. “Thank you.”

He smiles. “I was making tea. Do you like tea?”

Her tight, thin face loosens enough to smile. “I love tea,” she says. “Do you have proper teacups and saucers?”

He feels like dancing on the spot. No one appreciates a good cup and saucer anymore. It’s all mugs and chunky dishes. “I do,” he says. “A lovely set with pink and purple. They were my daughter’s favourites.”

The words are running away on him in his excitement and he wishes he could drag them back.

The woman nods and smiles. “I’m sure they’re lovely,” she says, then looks down. “Oh! I’m sorry.” She kneels and mops the floor with the end of the robe, blood from her feet leaving little smears, and he hurries to her side. 

“Don’t worry,” he says. “It’ll come out.” He looks at her, then scoops her up like she’s a child. She trembles in fright, but she’s too small to fight as he carries her, tiny little bird, to the couch and sets her down. “Here,” he says, handing her his kerchief. “Mop them up and I’ll get the tea.”

She’s still there, curled up like a caterpillar on a mushroom, when he returns with the tray. 

“What’s your name?” she asks in a whisper.

He sets the tray down and sits down beside her. “Jefferson,” he says. 

“Just Jefferson?”

He nods, pouring them both a cup. “Just Jefferson,” he says. “How about you?”

“Belle?” she says, though it’s more question than statement, as if she’s not really sure.

He looks at her, thin face, blue eyes, shaky smile. It would suit her, if she wasn’t trembling like a wind-shaken leaf. “Belle,” he says thoughtfully. “Just Belle?”

Her shoulders rise, a half-shrug. “I think so. It’s… been a while since I’ve been someone.”

He draws and releases a great breath. She’s like him, and it’s wonderful and feels like breathing for the first time. “Sugar?” he asks, reaching for the tongs for the sugar lumps. “Or milk? Or both? Or lemon?”

Blue eyes look and she smiles a little. “Surprise me,” she says. “Any tea is good.”

He looks her up and down, all tiny bones and fragile. She needs to be strong, and bold, and he knows she must be sweet. He adds a dash of milk and two sugar lumps with a flourish, and stirs without once clinking the spoon against the side of the cup. 

“Milady,” he says, bowing where he sits as he hands her the cup and saucer.

She sits like a duchess, and drinks like a lady. “Thank you,” she says again, softly. She’s watching him out of clever blue eyes, and he knows she’s thinking as quick and careful as he is. You must be careful with the words you use, because they can be turned on you. “Why did you send her away?”

He adds lemon to his own tea and surveys the board they are laying between them with their words. “Why do you think?”

“I think you don’t like her,” she replies. 

He inclines his head. “And I think you don’t either,” he agrees.

She takes another sip of her tea. “She knows you were lying, but she can’t do anything about it,” she says.

“If you had an escaped patient and were Mayor of the town, would you be chasing them yourself, in your best shoes?” he says, offering her a ginger biscuit. Belle takes one, and shakes her head. “She can’t approach the Sheriff, you see,” he says. “The new Sheriff doesn’t like her very much.”

“Does anyone?” Belle asks.

It’s a straight question for a girl who has been in hospital, and probably has been there like he has been in his house.

Jefferson sits back and looks at little Blue Eyes. “You were in the hospital,” he says. “Why?”

She gazes at him above her teacup. “Because she put me there.” She fixes him with a gaze as sharp as a hatpin. “You said you would tell me about Wonderland.”

“What of it?” he asks, wishing he had never said a word of it.

The girl is watching, waiting, breathing slowly in and out. “You were the hatter.”

Jefferson’s hands twitch and he sets down the cup. He hated that title, that name, that place, but no one - not a person - knows that he was there and then and that. “The hatter?” he says and hopes he sounds casual.

“The hatter,” she repeats, as if rolling the name around in her mouth. “I tried to find you. I thought we could help one another, but they kept you secret.” She traces her finger across her neck, and he knows she’s seen his scar. “Off with his head. I heard the whispers.”

He leans back on the couch, watching her with her bright, blue eyes, and the hope and fear that’s there. “You know you sound quite mad, don’t you?”

She laughs quietly. “Don’t you know?” she says. “Most everyone is mad there.” Her lips turn up and almost smile. “You have to be, or else you can never survive.”

“A world of nonsense and non-sense,” he murmurs.

She smiles truly, and her eyes are alive. “And you remember.” She glances towards the hall and the front door. “You know who she is.”

“Regina,” he murmurs.

“The Queen,” Belle says in a whisper. “My enemy, the Queen.”

Jefferson stares at her, and grins like he’s the cat. “Your enemy?”

Belle dips the edge of her biscuit into her tea, then sucks the moisture like poison from a wound. “She deceived,” she says quietly. “She fooled me into being a trap, and when it failed, when I was alone and undefended, she was waiting, and so was Wonderland.”

“She had the hat,” Jefferson says, realising just what power he left in the Queen’s hands. 

“The hat,” Belle whispers. The cup is shaking in her hand and she sets it down. “She left me at the mercy of the Queen of Hearts, stole and left me.” She touches her throat, smooth and unscarred. “I was lucky.”

“You had something she wanted?”

Belle shook her head. “I ran,” she confesses. 

He puts out his hand to covers her, shaking like a shivering bird on her knee. “It takes a brave person to run in Wonderland.”

She looks at him, and he can see the breaks. He has them too. Anyone left alone there too long will have them, and there’s nothing that can be done to repair them. “What was your secret treasure?” she asks quietly. 

“Treasure?”

She retrieves her teacup and sips, and one fingertip traces the rim. “If you stay there, your mind turns over on itself,” she says. “I had a person, a face, someone I thought of to tie my mind down, to keep it from tumbling away.” She looks at him. “You can speak sense here, so you must have kept some sense there. Did you have a treasure?”

Jefferson looks at her, all innocent words and wide eyes, and knows that she knows just how much it hurts. She’s skewering like a needle, but it’s a kind needle, lancing a wound, letting it bleed cleanly. “I did,” he says, little more than a breath.

“Here?” she asks in a whisper.

“Her face,” he says. His throat is tight and his head is throbbing, and she’s squeezing his hand as one mad person to another. “She’s taken everything away from us. All our people, our world. Everything. We can’t get it back.”

Belle gazes at him, bright, bright eyes like the stars. “She’s taken them,” she says and there’s a ferocity in her voice that makes him think of the Jabberwocky’s cry in the dead of night. “I think we should take them back.”

 

___________________________________________

 

Very few things in Storybrooke surprise the man called Mr Gold.

Once in a while, someone will act out of character, at least for their Storybrooke persona, but that’s not surprising in the least. After all, these masks they were in Storybrooke are just that, and he’s not fooled by them in the least. He looks at Miss Blanchard, he still sees the stubborn warrior Princess. He sees David Nolan snivelling and whining, and smiles at how the noble and mighty have fallen.

Very few people are a surprise.

However, the man standing opposite him, with a gun and a slow, steady smile, are both quite surprising by Storybrooke standards.

The face is familiar, but it is a passing familiarity, perhaps someone who once refused him a deal. No. Not that. He remembers all those who refused his deals. They are so much rarer than those who accept. Someone who was once of interest. He studies him, searches his memory, and he recalls.

Jefferson.

The boy was skilled, in the forest. There was no question of that. However, the popular rumour was that he had retired, and then, that he had died. Most believed in death, because when a magician gives up the impulse to touch magic, there is very little left for them in the world. Rumpelstiltskin knew better. He remembers seeing the man before him with a child, and that is something that can be much more powerful than magic.

And, of course, the man clearly isn’t dead.

Dead men don’t tend to break into a shop and take a mild-mannered shop-owner hostage.

“How can I help you?”

Jefferson stares at him. Gold supposes he isn’t acting like a hostage should, but there are far worse things than guns. “I need you to come with me.”

Gold puts his head to one side. “And why would I do that?” he asks.

Jefferson frowns, pointing to the gun with his other hand. “I think this is point enough.”

Gold smiles, almost laughs. “No, dear,” he says. “You point that thing at me and tell me you want to take me hostage. That suggests that you want me alive. Pointing it at me, therefore, is a hollow threat, as you won’t use it, since you do - as previously stated - require me to be alive to go with you.”

The poor little hat-bearer’s lips move, as he fumbles through the logic. “Still playing with words,” he snarls, and suddenly, the happy hat-bearer is gone and there’s something a lot more interesting and dangerous in his place. “Don’t toy with me. I’m having a difficult day and I’m not in the mood to be toyed with.”

Gold’s upper lip curls. “And I am not in the mood to be threatened,” he says, “so I ask you again, how can I help you?”

“You’re coming with me,” Jefferson says, indicating to the back door, which is still wedged open with a chair. “There’s a car, and you will come and you will explain, and she will decide whether she wants to keep you alive or not.”

“I find your incentive for me to come rather lacking,” Gold murmurs, but he can’t help asking. “To which ‘she’ are you referring?”

Jefferson’s eyes fix on him. “Someone who says she knows you,” he says. “She has some questions for you.” He grins suddenly, manic and wide. “She says if anyone knows the answer to her question, it would be you.”

“And who,” Gold murmurs, watching the madness glint in the man’s eyes, “might she be?”

Jefferson spreads his empty arm and laughs. “I don’t know,” he says. “How am I meant to know? I just found her, and she’s not welcome in town, and now, she wants to see you, Rumpelstiltskin.”

Gold feels as if his heart might just have stopped. He’s listened in the streets, walked the town, heard people talking and no one, not a one of them, remembers his name. No one but Regina could, and the curse should have taken the memories of anyone else.

“What do you mean ‘Rumpelstiltskin’?” he asks, forcing his voice to calmness.

The man’s eyes come into focus and fix on him. “Rumpelstiltskin?” he echoes, as if he wasn’t the one brought up the name.

“You called me that,” Gold says slowly. “Why did you call me that?”

Jefferson stares at him. “Because it’s your name,” he says. He waves the gun impatiently. “I told her I would bring you back. She’s asking for you. The Queen was looking for her, and she thinks you’ll know what to do.”

It’s impossible. Absolutely impossible. The curse would alter the memories of anyone in the Enchanted Forest. The only way they could be here was if they were from the Enchanted Forest, and the only way they could remember is if they weren’t. 

“Come on!” Jefferson says impatiently. “I want to go! She’ll be waiting and there are people around and they’re all cracked and jarring and it’s giving me a headache.”

“And once I’m done, I will be returned?” Gold says, hardly believing he is willing to venture out with the madman, but too intrigued and bewildered not to see who this ‘she’ is. “I will be brought back here.”

The madman’s face creases in a frown. “Of course.”

Gold wonders at the folly of people. “Then why not simply invite me?” he asks. 

Jefferson snorts. “She says you wouldn’t come, unless we were offering you something, and we’re not,” he says, but he puts the gun away anyway. “Come on. I can’t drive very well, so you’ll have to tell me how the car works.”

The car is an ancient beast, but luxurious and in a perfect state of repair. It’s in keeping with Jefferson’s Storybrooke persona of the reclusive, rich bachelor. There are a thousand and one rumours about him, but not one of them comes close to the gun-wielding madman currently behind the wheel. 

“So who is this woman I am to see?” Gold asks, once they are outside of the main part of town. “What does she think I know?”

Jefferson looks at him with a wide and knowing grin. “She thinks you know everything.”

Gold’s hand tightens around his cane and he wonders if it would be considered a crime to force the car off the road into the nearest ditch. If someone knows what he knows, then there is more danger hanging over him than he feared. 

He refrains, knowing that Jefferson is only the fool. 

This mysterious ‘she’ is the one who seems to know suspicious amounts about him. He wonders if it is the Queen playing him for the fool by sending an imbecile to bandy about his name, but it seems such a roundabout way of doing things. The Queen lacks subtlety. Not that Jefferson was subtle, but it was a more unusual approach than she might consider.

He’s still brooding on the possibilities when they draw up in front of the grand house that lurks in the edges of town. In all the years they have been in Storybrooke, he has never once approached the house nor the occupant. It was not something or someone who interested him, and so he did not feel the need to go near. Now, however, he is curious as to what the man has been hiding.

The foolish man has his gun out again, but he’s using it to scratch the back of his neck. 

Gold raises his eyes skywards, wondering how it’s possible that the man hasn’t accidentally blown his head off. “Where from here?” he asks.

“The door?” Jefferson says, looking at him as if he’s the imbecile.

Gold looks placidly at him. “Which one?”

Jefferson blinks. “Oh. Right. This way.” 

He sets off in the direction of the elegant front porch and Gold follows, careful on the gravel path. He can’t help thinking this will be a waste of his time, but - alas - curiosity was one of his worst traits. He was once compared to a cat, a long time ago, when he spent an afternoon just following his housekeeper around to see what she was doing.

He follows Jefferson up the stairs and frowns at the sight of faded, but still visible bloody footprints on the steps. Jefferson doesn’t seem to notice anything, running up the stairs two at a time, and knocking on the front door. “Little bird, little bird, let me come in.”

Gold is two steps from the top when the door opens. He sees a glimpse of brown hair before Jefferson strides into the house. The person who opened the door has apparently retreated further into the house, so Gold walks in, wary, suspicious.

“We have tea,” Jefferson says, setting his gun down on top of a grand piano.

“You do realise that your kidnap isn’t what anyone would call an efficient one?” Gold says dryly, stepping down carefully into the living room.

“You’re here,” Jefferson says, grinning. “That’s what we wanted, so it worked.”

The little bird, whoever it may be, has her back to them and is standing by the fireplace. It’s definitely a woman, and she’s wearing a dress far too big for her. She’s barefoot and her hair is knotted in a tight bun at the back of her head, and for a heartbreaking moment, he’s reminded of Belle, when she was setting out to clean in a morning.

“It’s him.” Her voice is hoarse, unfamiliar.

Jefferson saunters over to her. “I told you it would be him,” he says. “He doesn’t know it yet, but he is.”

“And it’s a curse.” It’s not a question, it’s a statement.

Jefferson nods, propping his arm on the fireplace and looking at Gold. “The Queen’s curse.”

Gold’s world is shifting beneath his feet like quicksand. He built it specifically. No one would know, so no one would really suffer, because they had no idea what had been taken, and all the while, his weapon was maturing and growing somewhere safe.

His legs tremble when the woman at the fireplace turned. 

The dead don’t rise, no matter how much magic you throw at them, good or bad or otherwise. The dead don’t rise, and yet, two of them are standing right before him, people who were long-dead according to the tales of the forest.

Belle. 

His Belle.

Hollow-faced, gaunt, but still unmistakeably his Belle.

With a calm he knows he has lost, she walks across the room like a Princess, and is right in front of him. She looks at him, like she knows him, like she can tell him everything about him, like she did that night in the dungeon. Her eyes are just as bright as they were then, and when she leans in and kisses him, he can’t, won’t, dares not pull away.

When she draws back, her eyes fixed on his face, it takes him a moment to realise Jefferson is standing right beside them, staring at him just as intently as Belle is.

“Did it work?” Jefferson asks, his face mere inches from Gold’s. 

Gold blinks at him foolishly, then at Belle. “Belle?”

Her face breaks into a smile, as bright as sunlight. “You remember!”

“I… of course I do,” he says, dazed. “I always did.”

“What?” Jefferson again.

“What?” Belle’s face falls.

“What?” Gold asks, completely at a loss.

Belle turns on Jefferson. “You said no one remembered!”

“No one does!” Jefferson exclaims, holding up his hands. “Only her!”

Belle smacks him on the arm. “Then how does he remember?” She turns on Gold, searching his face intently, and he can see the same glitter of madness in her eyes as in Jefferson. “What do you remember? How do you remember?”

“Belle,” he says, trying to wrap his head around the impossibility of the person in front of him. “You were dead.”

“Ah!” Jefferson wags a finger at the air. “I know what’s happening.”

“I’m quite sure you don’t,” Belle murmurs, staring at Gold as much as he’s staring at her. “I was dead?”

“I do know!” Jefferson interrupted, putting his face between theirs and looking from one to the other. “Was it the Queen? Did she tell you that?” Gold nods, ignoring the man’s face to stare at Belle. “There you go then. Simple.”

“Simple?” Gold turns to him. “Death isn’t simple.”

Jefferson rolls his eyes. “That’s because you assumed that death was literal. It wasn’t. It was metaphorical. Anyone can tell you that.” He’s nose-to-nose with Gold and grinning. “Don’t you know? The Queen lies.”

“Jefferson,” Belle says quietly. She puts her hand on Gold’s arm, solid and alive and real. “Do you want to sit down?”

He nods gratefully. “I think I may need to.”

She helps him, and sits as close to him as she can without being on his lap. She’s staring at him like a starving woman would a feast, as if he’s something she’s been looking for, for a long time, which is absurd. He cast her away. She should hate him. Deplore him. Curse and spit on him. One of her hands covers his and he can see scratches and bruises all over her hand and arm. Her nails are bitten to the quick, and she’s paler than he’s ever seen her.

“You were dead,” he repeats. “I looked for you.”

Jefferson sat down on the coffee table, leaning closer to stare at them. “He really doesn’t get over an idea fast, does he?” he says. “You really have to catch up. It took me one sentence from this lovely bird to know I wasn’t the only one in the cage with a memory.”

“It must be a shock,” Belle says quietly. He can feel her hand trembling around his. It’s not really noticeable, a mild tremor, but it’s continuous. Her eyes are on his face, as if she can’t believe she’s seeing him. “Did I break it? The curse? This time?”

He wishes it was so, wishes he could agree, but he shakes his head. “It’s not our place,” he says. “Someone else has that task.”

“But you…” She touches his cheek, and he knows what she must be thinking.

“This is a mask, dear,” he says quietly. “A face that will be accepted in this world.”

“This world,” she says in a whisper. “How is it you remember?”

His lips twitch, tightly, sadly. “When you build a cage, you should know the best ways to slip out of it.”

Belle is on her feet, backing away and Jefferson rises too, both of them staring at him.

“You did this?”

“No one was meant to know it was even there,” he says dully. “It was wrapped around the Enchanted Forest. No one should have known anything was missing from their lives until their lives started coming back.”

“And if you weren’t in the Enchanted Forest?” Belle’s hand reaches out and clasps at Jefferson’s, and they are both staring at him as if he is the monster everyone believes him to be. “Rumpelstiltskin, we weren’t in the Enchanted Forest. We were trapped. We were in another place. We remember everything. Twenty-eight years of lines on the wall and cages and we remember!”

Gold draws a shaking breath. Of all the people to be hurt by the damned curse, it had to be her, didn’t it? He built it to hurt the woman he hated most, and in the end, ended up torturing the woman he loved.

“I didn’t know.”

“I think we should shoot him,” Jefferson snarls. “That’ll break something.”

“Not the curse,” Belle says quietly. “But all curses can be broken.”

Jefferson pulls her closer to him, as if he - useless mad creature - can protect her in some way. And in some way, maybe he can. If Regina was looking for her and this poor sad wretch of a man managed to keep her hidden from view, maybe he can. 

“What shall we do with him?” he asks, hatred in his eyes.

Belle is staring at him like he’s a stranger. “Let him go,” she whispers, turning away. “I can’t look at him.”

Gold struggles to his feet on legs that are trembling. “Belle,” he says quietly.

Jefferson steps between them, his arms folded over his chest, and he’s taller, broader and angrier than Gold presently is. That is not a fight Gold knows he can win. “You heard her,” he says. “You’re going.”

Gold nods, and walks on legs of lead towards the door. He hesitates there. “I need to know,” he says. “Where were you?”

Jefferson’s face looks like it could be carved from stone. “Wonderland.”

Gold knows that if they had torn him to pieces, it couldn’t have hurt more. 

Wonderland. The place of nightmares, of unholy terrors that were worse than anything the Enchanted Forest could provide, and of running one pace forward only to end up two paces back. He had driven her away, left her there in his ignorance, and she had survived, only to remember every moment of it when the curse snatched her back.

He hesitates by the door. “I’m sorry, Belle,” he says quietly.

Jefferson takes a step towards him, baring his teeth, and Gold takes the less than subtle hint.

He hears her sob before he closes the door and looks blindly at the sky.

 

________________________________________

 

Belle likes to think she is calm under pressure.

Of course, she also is well aware that she is past the point of sanity and accelerating, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t calm when it matters. She was calm when confronted with the truth that twenty-eight years locked in a padded room at the mercy of the Queen, after weeks or months or years of running through the wilds of Wonderland was all the fault of her one true love.

It has to be some kind of irony.

On the other hand, twenty-eight years of sitting quietly came as a nice respite after climbing, leaping, crawling, singing, falling and generally exhausting herself for her life.

Jefferson is worried about her.

It wasn’t the crying that did it, even though that probably didn’t help. 

It was the silence that came after the crying, when she was in the middle of the knot of his arms and his legs and he was rocking them both from side to side, as if she was his child and he could keep her safe.

“You’re thinking,” he whispers. “Is it vengeance? Do you want him dead?”

She shakes her head. “I want the curse broken,” she whispers back, her head on his shoulder, her hands tight fists in the front of his shirt. “I want him free. That’s all I wanted for him. I want to know there’s a chance to be happy.”

He looks down at her. “You’re crazy.”

She giggles faintly. “We all are,” she says in a whisper. “They said no one but a madwoman would ever love Rumpelstiltskin. I must have been mad long before I got to Wonderland.” She presses her brow against his chin. “Love is stupid and blind and foolish, but it burns and keeps you going. He kept me running, when I thought I would stop.”

“Saved you?”

She smiles shakily. “In a way. And then the curse took us out of Wonderland. He was right about it. It took us away from the bad place. It just didn’t work the way it should, because our minds are turned to the left, like any mind ever left in Wonderland. You can’t twist a mind that’s turned to the left. It’s already too twisted.”

“At least your treasure knows you.” There’s anger in his voice, but mostly, it’s bitterness and grief. “Grace. My Grace. She doesn’t.”

She touches his face, draws his brow down to hers. “My treasure got us out of Wonderland. My treasure released us.” She looks at him. “He made the curse, but he can’t break it. We have to find the people who can, so your Grace will know you and my Rumpelstiltskin will be who he was and is again.”

“The one who sent you away.”

She closes her eyes, and his tears are on her cheeks. Or maybe they are hers. It‘s hard to tell. “Sometimes, you have to do what’s best for the people you love,” she says, “even if they don’t want you to.”

“And you love.”

She nods, and his arms are around her, and she’s crying again. 

“I think he does too,” Jefferson whispers in her ear. “I don’t read faces well anymore, but I think he was sad he hurt you and you’re only sad like that if you care enough.”

“He does,” Belle whispers. “He always did. But he was stubborn and scared and now, he’s broken the world.”

Jefferson kisses the tears off her cheeks, gentler than a kerchief, and hugs her close. “We need to speak to the Sheriff,” he says. “I’ve been watching the town. Changes started when she came, and she’s the reason the changes keep going.”

“And the Queen doesn’t hold her heart?”

Jefferson laughs. “No one does except her boy. I think he may be the only other person in town who knows something isn’t right.”

Belle opens her eyes and looks at him. “Why’s that?”

He leans close, his cheek to hers, and confides, “He grows up.”

Belle pulls back and stares at him. “He’s not one of us?”

Jefferson sways his hand. “It’s a little of little,” he says. “Little of, and little not. Emma, Emma Swan, the Sheriff, the one with the badge. She’s one of us, but she’s not. She’s lived outside all the time, and she’s his mother, even if the Queen bought and paid for him.”

She’s thinking now, her mind racing at the possibilities, and if there’s even one person who knows and believes, then that is the person they have to get to. That is the person who might be able to start turning the curse around. 

“This boy,” she whispers. “His name.”

Jefferson grins widely, like the curve of the moon in the sky. “Henry,” he says. “Little Henry Mills.” His face is so close to hers that they’re sharing the same breath. “Sometimes, he comes and plays in the park in the woods. Sometimes, he’s there all afternoon.” He lifts his hand to brush her hair back from her cheek. “The Queen took my child. We should take hers.”

“No,” Belle says at once. “No. No taking.”

Jefferson bares his teeth. “Why?”

She lifts her hands to cup his face, to make him listen. “Because we’re not her.” She knows he lost his treasure, but his was taken from his, while hers sent her away. He’s hurt more than she is, and she knows he would hurt people if he could, if it meant things could change, if it meant he could have his treasure back. 

He stares at her, wide-eyed, and nods. “No taking,” he whispers. “We don’t steal. We don’t lie. Not like her.”

“Not like her,” Belle says, like a prayer, like a spell. 

It has to be what they hold on to. They can’t be like her. If they are like her, then they too will do terrible, horrible things just to get what they want. She knows she isn’t like that. She knows Jefferson isn’t like that. They can’t be what they’re not. They’ve already lost too much. They can’t lose themselves too.

They talk quietly, sitting on the floor, surrounded by a house that is his but not, and things he would never use or want. They don’t stop touching, hands on shoulders on cheeks and they both need it, their anchors in one another. 

Together is better than alone, and when they sleep, they sleep curled up against one another. She wakes in the night, in throes of a nightmare, and his hand is clasped around her. He holds her or she holds him or both. They’re like one person, tangled together in a knot of grief, fear and madness. 

She doesn’t know if it’s thirty years of solitude that means his company, his touch, his presence is precious, but she knows that if he moves away from her, if she’s cut adrift on her own again, she might just scream.

They plan, though, and plan carefully. 

He shows her all his telescopes around the house, and tells her who each person is. She sometimes sees a face she knows, though she doesn’t know the name to go with them, and they have maps and plans, and she watches the playground obsessively, while he makes hat after hat.

They both know why he still does it, even if it’s useless. His hands have grown accustomed to twisting fabric into those shapes, and if he doesn’t, he will fidget and twitch and tear at his hair. It’s like her feet want her to run. They tap constantly, drumming on the floor, even as she sits and watches. She doesn’t need to run anymore, just as he doesn’t need to make hats anymore, but some wounds leave scars that are more than just marks on a body.

It’s days before the boy is at the park.

The Queen has come back to the house twice, once trying to sneak in the back, and another time peering in the windows, but Jefferson knows what she’s like. He has cameras, and Belle watches the multitude of screens as he goes to chase her away again. She knows he’s using the Sheriff as a threat. It took some persuasion to stop him simply using a shotgun and claiming the Mayor was an intruder. She knows if he does that, the curse will stay in place, and he will be locked up and she will be alone, again, and she can’t bear the thought of it.

Still, after the second attempt, the Queen’s son is once more allowed to the park. To Belle, it smells like a trap, but too many weeks and months in Wonderland does that to a person. When even the flowers will betray you, anything seems like a trap. It must be sprung, even if it is a trap, because they are desperate and so far from the things they want to be close to.

The Queen won’t give up, they both know it. They know they have to find some way to get to town, to be safely kept away from the Queen, but some way that she can’t cut across their paths and lock them apart again.

Jefferson could go, but Belle has seen enough of the television in this world to know a strange man near a park full of children will raise suspicions. A strange woman is less likely to, because women look harmless. It’s almost funny how wrong that assumption is.

They considered a disguise, something to at least pretend to hide who she is, to make her look like anything but the woman from the hospital. In the end, that means her hair is chopped short, fluffed and curly around her face. It makes her look less thin, and Jefferson fixes up some of the clothes so they fit her better.

She reaches the park in less than five minutes, running as fast as she can and dodging through trees and under branches. She’s good at running, and she knows no one will have caught up with her, no matter if they’re hunters. She was never caught there, and she knows she would never be caught here. She doesn’t even get a second look from any of the parents who are there. She has a book and a bag with candy, and she sits down to watch for the boy.

To her surprise, he comes to her. 

“Hello.”

Belle looks up at him. This is not how the plan was meant to go. “Hello?”

He puts his head to one side, looking at her with interest. “I don’t know you,” he says.

“No,” she agrees, closing the book she was never reading to begin with. 

He sits down on the bench beside her, leaning closer to look at her. “You were watching me,” he says. Belle stares at him, wondering just what kind of child they’re dealing with, and if he’s in league with the Queen. Maybe stealing him was the wiser plan. He smiles suddenly, all sunshine. “Don’t worry. I watch people all the time.”

“Is that so? Why do you do that?”

“Why do you?”

Belle doesn’t remember how to speak to people well. Jefferson is all right, because he’s like her, and when the words make no sense, he understands them. They both fit their minds together like two pieces of a cut page. “I heard you had a good book,” she says, and his eyes widen.

“You know about my book?” he demands. “How do you know?”

Belle sees movement in the trees on the far side of the play castle. Years of running makes her wary, and she knows Jefferson is watching for her signal, waiting, in readiness for the expected trouble. 

“A friend of mine,” she says, watching their surroundings. Her skin is prickling and telling her this is the time to leave, to run, to flee. “He says it keeps the truth in it.”

The boy grabs her hand. “How do you know that?” he demands, eager, wide-eyed, believing.

She looks at him. “Because,” she says, “I remember the truth.”

She sees the excitement, the joy, the hope, but she can also feel the paranoia born of terror screaming down her spine. They’re here, they’re watching, just like she knew they would be and she raises her hand. It’s the signal, and Jefferson will know what to do.

“Really?” he asks, holding onto her hand. “You know it’s true?”

She looks at him. Every impulse is screaming to run, but they have to follow the plan. They have to do what they must to make sure that they get to the Sheriff. “Henry, I need you to do something for me,” she says soft, urgent.

“What?” he asks.

He’s amazingly brave, even though he knows it’s all make-believe. As the Queen’s men emerge from the trees, Belle pulls Henry close and she has a kitchen knife, and he clings to her arm. He’s scared, but he’s brave enough to trust her.

The Queen might not be a good person, but she’s a mother, and the men back off. Other parents are screaming and panicking, and she knows that more than one of them will have called on the police. That’s good. That means she’s been seen. That she exists. That Regina can’t just close her away in her padded box again.

She hears the wail of sirens, the screech of brakes.

“Henry!”

The Queen too. Oh, how delicious that she’ll be here.

“I’m okay, mom,” Henry says, waving. “Hi Emma.”

“Miss, let him go.” Ah. This must be the noble Sheriff. It’s different seeing her in person, instead of through a telescope. She also has a gun, which isn’t something that Belle especially likes, but she understands why the Sheriff is holding it. It’s by her side for now, but the warning is there.

“It’s all right, Henry,” the Queen says, her hands raised, palms empty. “You’ll be fine.”

“I know,” he replies, and Belle has a feeling that he’s smiling far too much for a convincing hostage. 

“I don’t like crowds,” Belle says quietly. “There’s a crowd. You and me and no others, Sheriff. That’s what I want.”

The Sheriff looks around at the hovering throng, then orders them away. They go, still curious, but they obey and that’s something. She even turns to the Queen, who looks like she’s torn between screaming and grabbing the gun from the Sheriff’s hand.

“Madam Mayor.”

“He’s my son, Sheriff.”

The blonde head nods. “I know,” she says quietly. “But we need to get him back for you.”

Belle wants to smile at the Queen, smile and laugh in her face and watch her burn, but she doesn’t. She just holds Henry that little bit closer, and he holds her arm, like she’s his own favourite toy. The knife is under his chin, and it looks terrible and dangerous, but in truth, it’s blunt and couldn’t even cut bread.

The Queen stumbles away, betrayal on her face, and the Sheriff comes a little closer, a step at a time, like Belle is some kind of wild horse to be tamed.

“Now, maybe you’ll tell me what I can do so you’ll release the boy,” she says.

Belle nods at once. “I know exactly,” she says. “You can arrest me and lock me in your jail, and make sure that woman doesn’t come after me again.”

The Sheriff stops dead. “Huh?”

“I want you to take me to town, Sheriff,” Belle says patiently. “I can tell you the full story there, but I need your promise that you won’t let that woman anywhere near me.”

“Lady, you’ve taken a kid hostage. Why should I do anything you ask?”

Henry grins. “I’m not a hostage,” he says brightly. “I’m a good actor. She asked me to hold her arm and pretend I was scared.”

The Sheriff looks like she could throttle him. “What the hell is going on?” she growls.

“Miss Swan,” Belle says softly, calmly. “You know your Mayor is corrupt. You know that she has acted illegally, but you’ve never been able to prove it. I’m living evidence of that corruption, and if you don’t arrest me and take me in, I know for a fact you will never see me again.” She nods at Henry. “This is a desperate measure. She’s already come after me three times, and I don’t want to see it being a fourth.”

The Sheriff’s fingers are tightening around the gun. “Fine,” she says. “Let the kid go and I’ll arrest you right away.”

Belle loosens her grip on Henry, and gently pushes him forward. It’s all going to plan, but it’s too neat, too smooth, and her instincts scream that the Queen isn’t about to let her walk into town as if she belongs there. She spins around at a sound, then throws herself flat a second before the sound of a gunshot rings out.

Her heart is racing and she hears the Sheriff yelling out. Henry is on the ground near her and crawling over. He looks frantic, and she can feel warm wetness spreading across her shoulder, and that isn’t part of the plan. 

The Sheriff is by her side a second later, her body shielding Belle’s, and her hand clamping to the wound in Belle’s shoulder.

Belle looks up at her. “See what I mean?” she whispers through trembling lips.

 

_____________________________________________

 

Emma Swan is having a bad day.

When she got the call from the park about a kid being taken hostage by a woman with a knife, it was bad enough before she knew that it was Henry. He was the only one who didn’t seem to be panicking about it. The woman who was holding him was crazy, obviously crazy, ranting about Regina trying to get at her. And then, the icing on the cake was that Regina had the woman shot as soon as she released Henry.

“She had my son!” Regina hisses. “You think I was going to risk her grabbing him again.”

“She had released him!” Emma snarls back. She’s covered in the woman’s blood, and her hands are sticky fists by her sides. “What right does your forest warden have to go around shooting people in these situations?”

“Taking a child hostage with a knife isn’t good enough for you?”

Emma grabs her arm. “Take Henry,” she says, low and dangerous. “Go home. Don’t make it look like you have lackeys who shoot insane people in the woods in front of children.”

Regina’s eyes narrow, and Emma knows that she’s just adding another thing to a long list of reasons for the Mayor to hate her. She shakes Emma’s hand off and prowls away, grabbing Henry and steering him towards the car.

Emma makes her way back to the ambulance, where the woman is lying on her side. The back of her shirt has been cut away, and there’s a compress there. She looks pale, drained, but she manages a frail smile.

“You’re lucky,” Emma murmurs. “If you’d still been standing, it would have gone through your chest.”

“This wasn’t in the plan,” the woman whispers hoarsely, “but I should thank her for emphasising my point.”

Emma looks at the two medics, who step away, leaving them alone. “You said she was out to get you,” she says quietly. “This goes a long way to proving it. Why didn’t you just come into town and speak to me?”

The woman laughs, a small, strained sound. “She’s been watching the place I’ve been hiding out for days. I wouldn’t even have got within spitting distance of town.” She gropes out and catches Emma’s hand. “Please. Don’t let them take me to the hospital. I can’t go there. That’s where she locked me up last time.”

Emma nods at once. “You’re still under arrest,” she says quietly. “We’ll get you patched up, then down to the jail. I can keep you under watch there.” The woman’s eyes are half-closed, but she nods in agreement. “Is there anyone I can call for you?”

The woman breathes in and out, then struggles to sit up. “The pawnbroker,” she says in a whisper.

“Mr Gold?” Emma frowns, surprised.

The woman’s lips twitch in a half-smile. “Yes. Him. Gold. Mr Gold.” She laughs quietly, swaying where she’s sitting. “I wonder if he chose the career for the name or the name for the career.”

“Maybe you should lie down,” Emma murmurs. “You don’t look so good.”

“No,” she whispers. “If I lie down, if I look weak, they’ll say I need to go to the hospital, and I am not going back there, not ever.” She looks up, like a startled animal, as someone crashes through the bushes nearby, and Emma steps in front of her protectively. 

There’s a man there, dressed like he’s been at the best tailors in town, but he looks frantic, and trembling. “Where is she?” he asks.

“Jefferson.” The woman on the stretcher gently pushes Emma to one side, and the man runs to her, kneeling and wrapping his arms around her middle, his cheek pressed to her chest, and the woman touches his hair gently, smoothing it. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” he whispers, all but clawing his way up her body, hardly noticing the blood he’s getting all over himself. He’s staring at the woman with a wild intensity and Emma wonders if this is the boyfriend or lover or something much more complicated. “The bitch had you shot.”

 

Ah. Yeah. Complicated.

The woman gently cups his face between her hands. “It’s all right,” she says, and the faith in her voice when she looks at Emma and smiles is like a punch to the chest. “It’s all right. The Sheriff is going to protect us now.”

Jefferson looks up at her too, and for a moment, he smiles the brightest smile Emma has ever seen in her life. “You’ll keep us safe?”

“Us?” Emma raises an eyebrow. “Two minutes ago, it was just your lady friend.”

He has one of the woman’s hands in one of his and his other arm is still around her. “Where Belle goes, I go, until it’s safe,” he says fiercely. “Until I know she’ll never harm us again, I’m not leaving her.”

Emma looks between them, the way the woman, Belle, is leaning into him. “Okay,” she agrees reluctantly. “But you’ll have to let her go so they can stitch her up, then we’ll head back in the squad car.”

The man pries himself off her, stepping back alongside Emma. “You’re really going to keep her safe? Us safe?” he asks, staring at her intensely. He is a little too close and she edges away just enough to not offend him, but to feel more comfortable. 

“I’ll do my best,” she says. “Your girlfriend should have called me.”

He shakes his head. “She’s not my girlfriend. And I don’t use a phone.” He looks sharply at Belle when she hisses, as the medics stitch up the ragged tear across her shoulder. The wound isn’t deep, but it’s bloody and she sees him grimacing in sympathy. “We had to get your attention. Belle thought this was the right way.” There’s a note of hysteria creeping into his voice. “She wasn’t meant to get shot.”

“Hey, it’s okay,” Emma says, touching his shoulder. He whirls around, shying from her, one hand raised as if to push her away. He’s as jittery as the woman. “She’s going to be fine. It’s just a flesh wound. She’ll need to take some fluids, but she’ll be fine.”

“Fine,” he echoes. “She’ll be fine. Not gone. Not dead. Not away.” He wraps his arms over his middle, rocking on his feet. He looks as if he might break down, watching as the woman is tended by the medics. “I can’t lose her. I can’t. I only found her and no one else can help me like she can.”

“Help you?” Emma prompts quietly. The guy is clearly unstable, and if the woman is his carer, and she’s in danger, that’s a big problem. “How does she help you?”

He looks at her and smiles a devastated, broken smile. “She helps me to be me. I’d almost forgotten how to be.”

“Well, that’s good for her,” Emma murmurs, looking at the woman. The medics are sealing a bandage in place and she‘s looking up at the man with a small, tremulous smile. “Do you maybe want to give her your coat? Her shirt is kinda ruined.”

His coat is off and wrapped around the woman almost as soon as Emma speaks.

“I’ll carry her to the car,” he says. “She’s safest that way.”

“I can walk,” Belle murmurs. 

“No, you can’t,” he retorts, pressing his cheek to her hair. “Sh now.” He looks at Emma expectantly, and she motions for him to follow her across to the waiting car. He doesn’t even hesitate before climbing into the back seat, his wounded friend in his lap.

The journey back to town is made in silence, except for the occasional murmur exchanged between Emma’s passengers. She glances at them in the mirror once in a while, just to be sure the girl hasn’t passed out or bled all over everything. 

Jefferson, if that’s his name, is stroking the woman’s hair and cheek gently, tenderly, and if she didn’t know better, anyone who saw them would swear they were newlyweds, with all the touchyfeeliness going on.

Emma is pleased to see the parking spot at the garage is vacant. Some part of her expected Regina to have a welcoming committee waiting to haul the newest face in town away, but it looks like for once, she’s letting the law do its work. 

Probably because there were at least a dozen people who saw one of Regina’s own rangers shoot a woman who had just surrendered.

She hustles them into the building. Jefferson is still carrying Belle, who seems almost out of it in his arms. Shock, Emma figures. Being shot isn’t exactly good for anyone, and someone as small, thin and sickly-looking as the girl is going to take it so much worse.

It doesn’t feel right to put her in cells right away, even though there’s a bed right there. If Jefferson minds the bars, he doesn’t say, and Emma spread the blanket, fluffs the pillow, then steps back to let him lay Belle down. 

“I’ll get her something to drink,” she says. “And call Mr Gold.”

Jefferson is up and facing her in a second, stooping close to ask in a whisper, “Why are you calling on him?”

His face is less than an inch from hers and she turns and walks away, just to get back in her own personal space. “She asked me to call him.” She fetches him a glass and some water, pressing it into his hands. “Make sure she drinks as much as she can. She’ll need to replenish her fluids.”

She takes her time making the call, as well as calling to check on Henry to make sure he isn’t too freaked out about the woman who was shot in front of him. Regina, unsurprisingly, is ice-cool to her and hangs up without giving any information.

Emma is still sitting at her desk, head in her hands, massaging her temples when she hears the tapping of Gold’s cane down the corridor. She looks up and sees that Jefferson is already on his feet, like a startled rabbit, and Belle is struggling to sit up on the bed, both of them wide-eyed and wary.

Emma rises and leans out into the corridor. “Gold.”

His lips turn up mildly. “Miss Swan,” he says. “You were rather cryptic on the telephone.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Got a couple of people here who asked for you. Wasn’t sure how much to tell you over the phone.” She holds the door open for him and nods towards the open cell, where they’re waiting.

Gold is a mystery to her. He doesn’t show emotion. He doesn’t show anything. The only time she ever saw him lose it was when Moe French robbed him, and even then, there was something behind it that neither he nor Mr French were about to admit to.

That means the look on his face when he sees the girl is not what Emma expected.

He looks as if someone has just slammed him in the ribs with a baseball bat, and for a moment, he sways where he stands. Then it’s gone, and he’s just the same old, expressionless Gold again. “What happened?” he asks through lips pressed tightly together, his eyes fixed on the girl.

As briefly as she can, Emma sums up the events in the woods, from the moment the call came in, right through to when Henry was freed and the woman was shot. “And she asked me to call you.”

“Good,” Gold murmurs. “Very good.”

“Do you know them, Gold?”

Brown eyes look at her. “I know everyone in Storybrooke, Miss Swan,” he murmurs. “These two are no exception.”

She’s almost convinced by his hardass act, but that’s when she notices his hands, which are resting on his cane handle. The top one is gripping the bottom so hard that the knuckles are white, and yet, both hands are still shaking. 

“You okay?” she asks quietly, and the look in his eyes when he turns to her is burning and furious. She’s never seen Gold angry before, even with the French incident, and she’s kind of glad of that now. He looks like he’s ready and willing to tear the world to pieces because of something she’s definitely missing to do with the girl and her madman.

“If you will excuse me, Miss Swan,” he says, and his mouth turns up. “I believe I have a client to attend to.”

“Client?” she echoes doubtfully.

“The lady will need defending, given her pending abduction charges, as I recall,” he says, inclining his head towards the cell. “I am putting myself forward as her legal counsel. I believe she has the right to an attorney, does she not?”

Emma looks him up and down. “You?”

“The word of the law is my sideline,” he murmurs. “You should remember. I did hand you some very useful ordinances not too long ago.”

She remembers all too well. That’s why she has the badge now.

“I’m staying in my office,” she says. “You can do your attorney thing, but I am not going anywhere, as long as that girl is in this building. If she’s in danger, I’m making damn sure no one else will get to her.”

He inclines his head in something like a bow. “That’s very much appreciated, Sheriff Swan,” he says, and for once, Emma thinks he might actually be serious. Whoever the hell this girl is, she’s someone important to him, that much is obvious.

She watches as he makes his way across the room. 

Gold with a girl he’s looking out for?

There has to be some catch.

 

______________________________

 

 

Jefferson isn't happy at all.

The plan didn't go the way it was meant to. Belle wasn't meant to be shot. She wasn't meant to be almost killed. They're in the jail, and that's good, but he can't help looking at the blood on her skin and on his shirt.

The jail feels safe, at least.

It doesn't feel like a prison, not like his home does, not like the hospital does for Belle. 

The Sheriff is sitting at her desk, watching over them, and Belle's right. She said she would look out for them, and she's sitting like a warrior and guardian. Even though Belle put a knife to her son's throat, she's willing to listen and that's more than anyone from the Enchanted forest would do. She should wield the vorpal sword. It would sing for her.

"She's called on him," he says, sitting down close to Belle. Their hands are sticking together with her blood. "Says you want him."

She nods. She's pale and drawn against the pillow. "He knows this world. He can help her protect us."

Jefferson wishes it wasn't so. He knows she trusts Rumpelstiltskin, her treasure, but Jefferson remembers the name being spoken in terror by the people of the forest. He was a monster, a corrupter, a trickster. He offered for a price that was too high, and took what could not be afforded.

Belle looks up at him. "Trust me," she whispers. "You don't need to trust him, but trust me."

He lifts her hand to his face, pressing the back of it against his cheek. "You won't leave me to go with him?" he asks in a small voice. "You won't leave me alone?"

"We're together," she promises in a whisper. "Until this curse is broken and we're home, we're together."

He helps her lean up and she drinks from the cup the Sheriff has provided, while they both wait and wait and see what happens. Belle is still chalky white, but her eyes are brighter and more hopeful than before.

He spins about at the sound of a cane tapping on the floor, and he's in the entrance to the cell, holding the bars on either side of the door. If it's anyone but Rumpelstiltskin, if it's anyone he doesn't know, he's locking them in, and no one can take her away.

It’s him.

Jefferson feels like he should be a cat, his hackles raised and his tail bushed. He wants to hiss, keep them man away, keep the one who put them in this place and time at bay, but he knows Belle needs all the people they can gather, all the people who can help. 

Rumpelstiltskin's face gives him away.

He loves, and he hurts at the sight of Belle's blood, and for a moment, Jefferson can almost think about forgiving him. Only for a moment.

The Sheriff lets him in, but she looks suspicious, as Jefferson feels. Jefferson waits until the man is right in front of him, until they're all but nose to nose, and he stands his ground. Rumpelstiltskin has to know that this is not his choice, but Belle's and that he - unlike Rumpelstiltskin - is respecting Belle enough to do as she asks. 

"Jefferson," Rumpelstiltskin murmurs. There's a gleam in his eye, the fire of burning boats on the black waters, and fury. He's angry and calm like a storm, and that's good. He needs to give a damn, if he's going to be any use. "I'm here to provide legal counsel."

Jefferson gazes at him, long and steady, then steps aside to let the man into Belle's haven, the Sheriff's safe cage. He turns and closes his hands around the bars again, blocking the man in with them, in their little pool of insane sanity in a world that is all wrong.

Rumpelstiltskin sits down on the edge of the bed, and he is just looking at her, and Belle is looking at him. Jefferson remembers wordless exchanges like that, a long time ago, when he and Alice could speak a thousand words with one look. 

Jefferson looks at the floor. This isn't a place he should be. He remember when the nettle-weed tried to tangle around Alice, and they both ended up bleeding. There's something there, something important, being looked after by someone with love, when that love has almost been stolen. Sometimes he forgets that he shouldn't go so close, but this, when there's bleeding and there's love, he remembers it's important.

"I'll kill her myself," Rumpelstiltskin whispers.

"No." Belle's voice is quiet, tired, full of pain and love. "There are other ways. Hers is the way of pain and cruelty."

"Belle..."

Jefferson looks up to see Belle put her arms around the man, the coat slipping from her bandaged wound, and her cheek is pressing to his shoulder. Rumpelstiltskin is motionless as a statue, except that he's trembling as if he's sitting on an earthquake, and Jefferson knows he wants more than anything to hold her. "Don't be such a coward," he growls. Belle is hurt and needs to be loved.

Rumpelstiltskin's glare hits him like blades, but the man still carefully, gently puts his arms around Belle, drawing her closer. He pulls the coat more snugly around her, keeping her safe and warm, and Jefferson is satisfied. He steps out of the safe little cage and leaves them to have their words, their 'legal counsel', and he walks out into the Sheriff's office.

"What's that about?" the Sheriff asks. She's sitting on the edge of one of the desks, looking at the cage, her arms crossed across her chest.

"Old story," Jefferson says. He sits down beside her, the warrior. It feels safe beside her, like it feels safe beside Belle. He looks at her sidelong, and wonders if she has any idea of the role ahead of her. "He cares about her."

"I can see that," Emma murmurs. "And I think Hell just froze over."

Jefferson can't help laughing. "You don't like him?"

The Sheriff looks at him. "He's a sneaky bastard," she says. "I tend to be suspicious of them." She straightens up. "Come on. I'll show you the bathroom so you can get cleaned up."

"She'll be safe?"

She smiles, nods, and he believes her when she says, "No one would try anything in here."

The building is large and impersonal and as unlike his home as can be. The bathroom is just outside the Sheriff's office. There's a toilet, a sink, and even a shower, and the Sheriff pulls a shabby towel down from a shelf.

"It's not much," she says. "But you can get the blood off your hands, at least." 

She's halfway back towards the door, when he catches her arm. "Please. Don't leave me here. Not alone." It was bad enough to watch Belle walk out the door, even when it was part of the plan. 

"You're safe here," she says, and her voice is calm and honest. He wants to believe her, but it's impossible with all of his familiarity with lies and falsehoods and the treachery of Queens and false lands. She sees it, and she gives him a half-smile. "Ill stay by the door, okay? That way, I can watch out for you and for her."

He nods, releasing her arm and goes to the sink. There's soap and water and he scrubs and scrubs at his hands. They're shaking again, as he washes little bits of Belle off him. She was almost gone, and now, she has her Rumpelstiltskin with her, and he's alone in the bathroom with bits of her and soap and water and Grace is such a long way away, even though she's only across town.

He folds and is on the floor and there are sounds in his throat that hurt like burning. He can't cry, not even in grief or pain. He can't. His sleeves are wet and his chest hurts as if the Queen has torn his heart out at the root.

The Sheriff is there, suddenly, arms and warm and holding him tight like Belle would, like Alice would. She's talking nonsense to him, soothing, stupid, meaningless nonsense, and he clings onto her arms, his hands shaking.

She lays her hand on his head, smoothing his hair. "She'll be fine," she whispers, as if he's a child who has had a nightmare. "It's only a flesh wound. Barely a scratch. I'll keep her safe, I promise. I'll keep both of you safe."

It's a long time before he can think or speak. His head and heart and throat all hurt, and he sits up slowly, back on his heels. "Bad day," he whispers, and his voice sounds like a stranger's.

She offers him a small, knowing smile. "I'm getting that," she says. She clasps his shoulder firmly, and her hand is strong and sure. "How about we get back in there and we get some coffee or tea or something? I think she could probably use some."

"Yes. Yes." He struggles to his feet and she puts a hand under his arm. "She likes tea. Tea with sugar."

"And you?"

He hesitates, then shakes his head. "No tea." He looks at her with wary hopefulness. "Do you have chocolate milk? I think I need something sweeter."

"I'm sure we can get some," she says with that same smile. "I'm Emma, by the way." She offers her hand, then grimaces and draws it back. It's still covered in Belle too. "I guess I should clean up as well."

He sheepishly holds out the towel he never used. "Sorry about your shirt."

She patted his arm. "Don't worry about it. There's worse things than some soap and water." She's being kind, because she knows he's broken, and he's grateful and sad that he can't be more whole and more sane for her. She doesn't know what's happening and what's coming, and she'll need sane and strong soldiers when the walls descend.

She washes her hands and takes off her shirt, leaving it to soak in the basin. She's wearing a vest and he can see her in armour as clearly as day. She should be a Knight, gleaming and metal-clad. She should have more than a little tin badge, but every Knight has to start somewhere. 

"How do you know her?" she asks, as they head back down the hall towards the office.

Jefferson looks at her, and knows she deserves the truth. "She was running away from the... the Mayor," he says. "She found my house. I took her in. We've been trying to find a way to contact you since then."

Emma looks at him, then nods. "And now, you have my attention," she says. She holds the door for him and he looks at the cage. Rumpelstiltskin and Belle are sitting side-by side, talking quietly. She's holding her hand between both of his, in her lap, and he's watching her as if she's the greatest treasure. The Sheriff walks over, Queen in her castle, and puts her hands on her hips. "So, what do we know?"

Rumpelstiltskin turns to her, and Jefferson can see the reluctance. He wants to keep looking at his Belle, but business is business and must be attended to. 

"Sheriff Swan," he murmurs. "Miss French has been explaining the details of her recent incarceration. You will need to issue a subpoena to the hospital, requesting her records be released. Until we know the circumstances she was committed under, we cannot counter it."

"Back up," Emma says. She's frowning. "French. As in Moe French?" She's looking at Rumpelstiltskin, as if she's just solved the sphinx's riddle. "Her. He hurt her."

Rumpelstiltskin's face is impassive, but his eyes flash with something like fire. "Indeed."

"Papa thought it was for the best," Belle murmurs, and this is a part of the tale Jefferson doesn't know. "He thought I might be in danger, and that she could protect me."

“Damn it, Gold,” Emma groans. “You knew she was in trouble?”

“I was told,” he says through clenched teeth, “that she was dead. Due to her father’s abuses. Clearly, I was mistaken.”

The Sheriff is quiet for a long time.

Jefferson edges around her to sit down beside Belle’s feet. She moves one of her hands, puts it on his shoulder and he lifts his own hand to cover it.

Finally, Emma pulls a chair in from the office and swings it around to sit on it backwards. “I think you guys have a story I need to hear.”

 

_______________________________________________

 

Gold isn’t one to show his cards, but sometimes, it becomes necessary.

When Belle sent him from the madman’s home, he returned to the shop, his domain, the place of secret deals and darkness. Shock can get the best of even the most practical of men, and the shock of finding about the continued existence of one of the few people he had loved and believed dead was certainly that.

In the quiet and the dark, he reconstructed the spell of the curse, seeking out the unexpected loopholes which had not only dragged Belle and Jefferson back from the twisted depths of Wonderland, but that had left their shattered minds intact, only to be broken even more by the reality they could see and that everyone else was oblivious to.

It should not have been possible, even within the boundaries of the curse, but then Wonderland was a place of fetid, corrupt magic, where the headless could be crowned, the faceless could smile, and the executed could walk long after their executions.

That same magic must have warped the curse. That’s the only explanation he can find. That they were drawn back, true residents of the Enchanted Forest, makes sense, but their memories being intact reeks of Wonderland’s poison.

The only saving grace is the knowledge that when the curse is broken, they will revert to the Enchanted Forest, just like everyone else affected. There, at least, they could find some semblance of a normal life, even if their minds needed time to heal and recover from the terror of both Wonderland and twenty-eight years in Storybrooke.

Of course, his other distraction was the knowledge that not only had the Queen lied, but she was the reason that Belle had found herself trapped in Wonderland in the first place, and that was something he was willing to punish with every method at his disposal.

Naturally, in Storybrooke, he had to do things in a less interesting way than in the Forest, but he was not lacking in sources and resources. Every one of those was now manipulated, bullied and coerced into seeking out the information he needed, and yet every one of them was turning up nothing but that which he already knew. The Queen - their beloved Mayor - had her hands in everything and anything, as long as it retained her control. Like a fat spider waiting in the middle of her intricate web, she waited and plucked her threads.

It was becoming tempting to stride into her halls and put a gun to the damn woman’s head and demand information. Belle was alive. The impossible was happening. And he didn’t have any idea of what the hell had been going on.

That was when Sheriff Swan telephoned.

That was an event in and of itself.

He was tired enough, frustrated enough, to go straight to the Sheriff’s offices on her cryptic request, but when he saw the reason he had been called, it was as if someone had taken the very dagger that bore his name and drove it into his heart.

Belle was wounded in the cell, bloody, pale and exhausted.

The madman allowed him in, and even had the good sense to make himself scarce.

Belle, his Belle, his lost and wondrous and silly little Belle, was there and pale and holding him like she was afraid she would never see him again. Her madman called him coward, and he hated the creature, because the truth still hurt after decades.

She held him tightly, though, and it was only after her little madman slipped away that she whispered what had happened. Today, first, with Henry, the gunshot and Regina’s hunters. Then, everything that had led to it, from the moment she left the Dark Castle so many years before. 

Anger is gone, washed away by relief, by the time the Sheriff enters the cell and demands the tale. It’s still there, faintly, bobbing in the tide, but Gold knows that right now, his priority is the beautiful, broken creature leaning into him with such trust. He has betrayed her for the last time, he knows, and everything and anything he can do to make the world right again will be done for her. 

They weave a story of a kind for the Sheriff: Belle had previously been associated with Gold, and because this was considered a dangerous thing, her father had asked for the Mayor’s help to protect his girl. He hadn’t realised that protection meant incarceration, and Gold had been lied to about the girl’s fate, allegedly to keep her safe.

Sheriff Swan props her arms on the back of the chair, looking from face to face. They take it in turns to speak, Belle when they reach a point he doesn’t know, and he when Belle looks too distressed to speak. It sounds almost like a whole tale, almost entirely true, and it is, true enough, if only they could speak in terms of the Forest rather than the town.

She gazes at them, then sits up straighter. “Bullshit.”

Belle’s madman freezes.

“There’s something that’s missing. I can see the shape of all this is true, but it doesn’t feel like it’s true,” she says. “Something is missing. Something you all know, and something you’re not telling me.”

“The curse!” Jefferson almost barks it.

Belle’s hand is at his shoulder, but Gold sees the look on the Sheriff’s face.

They almost had her completely on side, and now, because the madman couldn’t hold his tongue for a moment, the doubt is back. 

“The curse.”

Jefferson flinches and hides his face in Belle’s thigh, as if he’s been struck. Madman he may be, but he also knows the folly of speaking out about magic and mayhem in front of one of the most wretched pragmatic and cynical people Gold has ever met.

"What do you mean, the curse?"

Gold looks at Belle, at the madman at her feet. This is not a situation he intended or expected to be in. He is counted as the voice of sense in the room, and the Sheriff's eyes are fixed on him, both accusing and demanding.

"What he means is that the Queen's curse is the real reason," he says.

Emma's mouth drops open, then she frowns. "Gold, this is so not time for joking."

"Indeed," he says quietly. "You want the truth, Sheriff Swan, and that is the truth of the matter. Some twenty-eight years ago, on the day of your birth to be precise, Regina cast a curse on all those resident in the Enchanted Forest which condemned us to this place."

The Sheriff stares at him. "What?"

"You heard me," he says, gazing steadily at her. She has a searching look, and he knows she sees more clearly than any in town. "I'm not lying and I'm not doing this to divert your from the real cause. I know that you have noticed there are many things wrong in this town, just below the surface. The curse is the reason."

"You can't expect me to believe that some weird magic curse is to blame," she snorts. "Henry has to have spoken to you."

Gold frowns at that. "Why would he?"

"Because he thinks you're all part of some messed-up story."

Gold stares at her. "Your boy knows? How?"

Emma's eyes narrow, suspicious and wary. "You didn't know about it? He has a book."

"Some fool gave the Queen's son a book of the truth?" Gold growls. "If she knew about that, if she knew that someone knew..."

Emma's lips purse. "She does," she says. "But that doesn't stop this being bullshit."

Gold looks at her. "After everything you've seen here, you still believe that, Miss Swan?" he says. "I can tell you who every person in town truly is. I can tell you the identities of your parents."

That should surprise her but she snorts dismissively. "Henry got there first, Gold. Snow White and Charming, right? Mary Margaret and David. He told me that my first day here."

Gold looks at Belle and her pet. They both look dazed by the fact their saviour knows and has done nothing, but Gold knows the kind of woman Emma is. She's like her mother: a realistic, down-to-earth and practical in the extreme.

"You don't believe me," he says slowly, "but if I can provide you with evidence, irrefutable evidence?"

"Evidence of a magic curse?" She props her arms on the back of the chair, looking steadily at him. "If you can prove it, and I mean really, really prove it, then I'll consider it." She puts her head to one side. "But if this is just playing up to two people who clearly have mental health problems, I will lock you up myself."

Gold bares his teeth habitually.

"She's right," Belle says quietly, touching his arm, soothing the savage beast. "No need to be angry, when she's only saying what she can see." She offers Emma one of those calm, quiet smiles that always made him wonder why she wasn't afraid of him. "We understand."

Emma looks at her. "So, let's say I let you explain, why were you locked away? Were you a threat to Regina?"

Belle smiles quietly. "I doubt it," she says. "I'm just a woman. Nothing special."

Gold wonders if she even realises what a tremendous lie that is. "Nothing special indeed," he murmurs and is gratified when she blushes, just a little. "Miss French was - unfortunately - my weakness. The Queen is not merciful to her enemies."

There's an intrigued look in Emma's eyes and Gold keeps his features as expressionless as possible. "His weakness?"

"Everyone has one," Jefferson says quietly, lifting his head. "She stole my child from me. Locked me away somewhere I could never find her."

Emma rose from the chair and walked over to the door of the cell. "You know this all sounds crazy, right?"

"Any more crazy than a woman being locked in an asylum under false pretences for years?" Gold murmurs. "Believe me, Sheriff, I am a believer in the value of the truth. This is not an occasion I would lie. Belle does not deserve to be troubled by further deception and trickery."

Belle's hand closes around his. 

It was too close, today, he knows. She smiled and said she was fine, but the way she held him, the tremors running through her, he knew it could so easily have been fatal. It takes no thought at all to lift her hand to his lips and kiss the shivering knuckles.

In the doorway, the Sheriff turns and looks at them, each of them. “You get me proof,” she says again, quietly. “I can’t make any promises, but get me proof and we’ll see where we go from there.”

 

________________________________________________

 

There is very little that Belle fears.

Even in Wonderland, she was not truly afraid, not unless the danger was very real and present. It was, frequently, but if you could run fast enough, think sharply enough, you could always keep a step ahead of it, and that made you feel all the braver.

Even when she was sealed up in the Queen’s prison in this world that was not the world, it wasn’t fear that subdued her. Isolation can drive the strongest mind to its knees, and twenty-eight years of being ignored and neglected had twisted her mind up as much as Wonderland.

It was not fear.

All the same, when the door of the Sheriff’s office opens and the Queen slinks in, clad in burgundy and smiling like a knife, Belle still rises and retreats to the furthest corner of her safe little cage.

Jefferson isn’t there. He and the Sheriff left the office only moments before. He was bordering on the hysterical after seeing his child go by with the Mayor and her son through the window. The Sheriff, out of kindness, offered to take him out the back for some air.

That left Belle alone.

“Good afternoon, Miss French.”

Belle presses back against the wall of the cell. It’s not fear. She knows it’s not. She only fears the thought of the solitude and isolation the woman before her commands. The woman doesn’t scare her, but the very idea of being dragged back to her hidden prison in the depths of the hospital, away from Jefferson, away from Rumpelstiltskin, terrifies her.

“What do you want?” she asks in a whisper.

The Queen smiles without showing any teeth or amusement. “I’m here to be sure that the woman who attempted to kidnap my son is where she belongs,” she says, approaching the bars. Her hands are clasped in front of her and she almost looks harmless.

“He’s not your son,” Belle whispers defiantly. She sees the calm come down like a shutter in the Queen’s eyes.

“I see your dear defender the Sheriff has been spreading stories about it,” the Queen says mildly, but Belle can recognise the madness of rage making her voice quiver softly. “You shouldn’t listen to strangers, dear. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”

“Found out myself,” Belle says, remembering a forest road, a carriage and a black-clad stranger with the same face as the woman before her. “Why won’t you leave me be?”

The Queen smiles, as if Belle is truly ignorant. “Because you’re much too useful for that, my dear.”

“If you had your way,” Belle says, shrinking back into the corner, “I would have been dead yesterday.”

The Queen waves a hand dismissively. “Let’s let bygones be bygones,” she says. “There will a review of your mental state, and naturally, as the woman who took an unarmed child hostage with a knife, you’ll find yourself back in the care of the hospital.”

It’s not difficult to let tears fall, and they make the Queen’s lips curl in an unpleasant way that reminds Belle terrible of the smile of the Jabberwocky. “Why do you hate me? What did I ever do to you?”

“It’s not what you did,” the Queen murmurs. The lock of the cell clicks under her touch and the door swings open. “It’s who you know. And I believe he will be quite amenable to persuasion if your fate lies in the balance.”

Belle knows she looks afraid. It feels like the very bricks of the wall are trying to embed themselves in her shoulders as the Queen approaches. She brings her arms up, half-shielding her face as if that will make a difference. “I don’t know what you mean,” she whispers. “I don’t know anyone who could be useful.”

The Queen gazes at her. “I know, child, but there we are.”

Belle lowers her arms, just a little. “Unless,” she says quietly, “you mean Rumpelstiltskin.”

There’s a moment of perfect, beautiful, delicious stillness. The Queen’s face is motionless, but something behind her eyes cracks wide open and Belle can see the first shimmers of what might be terror. 

“What?” The Queen draws herself up. “You’re throwing fairytales at me now?”

“Yes, your Majesty,” Belle says more strongly. She pushes away from the wall, steps forward, and the Queen steps back, too astonished, too shocked not to. “I remember, you see. You put me in a place where the curse could never touch my mind, and I remember.”

The Queen’s face is white as chalk and Belle is sure she can hear the crackling of panic.

“You little witch,” she snarls. “Is this a trick?”

Belle smiles, stepping even closer, and is delighted when the Queen backs towards the open door of the cage. “No trick,” she says. “That’s your skill. You left me in Wonderland, and it did wonderful and terrible things to my mind. Things that not even a curse can alter.”

 

“Gold!” The Queen is snarling like an animal. “Rumpelstiltskin! He did this. He shielded you from it!”

Belle laughs and feels good and right knowing that in this place and time, she has all the power and the knowledge and the Queen is standing on a house of cards that is falling down around her. 

“How can you protect what you think is dead, your Majesty?” She shakes her head and before the Queen can move, Belle runs forward the two steps between them, pinning her back to the bars, her hands on either side of the Queen’s head. “No, dear, no. This is all me.” 

She’s smiling and she knows that it’s a dangerous and mad smile. It’s the smile of the woman who fought the white rabbit for the rights to a burrow and shelter from the terrible storms. It’s the smile of the woman who consumed the smoke of the caterpillar and felt the world fold inside out and backwards around her. It’s the smile of a woman who has been beaten down so many times that the ground seems like it must be up.

“This is how I kill the beast.”

The Queen stares at her in horror. “What do you want?” she asks in a low voice. “Do you want him? Your freedom? What?”

Belle giggles, and wonder when her laughter turned into that of dear Rumpelstiltskin. “You don’t have anything that I want, your Majesty,” she coos, lifting one hand to trace her fingers down the Queen’s pale cheek. “You already took it all away and smashed it into dust.”

“So you’ll kill me?” The Queen says quietly. Her hands are moving from her sides and Belle has been too well-schooled by Rumpelstiltskin not to pay attention to every move that the witch Queen makes. 

Belle’s face is so close to the Queen’s that she can almost smell the fear and the fury. “I want to hear you say it,” she whispers. “Why you did this to me. Why you left me to rot. Why I spent all of my life in a cage.”

“Because no one,” the Queen snarls, and the fury is rising, overriding the fear, “especially not Rumpelstiltskin, deserves to be happy.”

Her hand moves and Belle feels the pain as a hand plunges into her chest. She laughs in delight and knows the Queen doesn’t understand. Not until Sheriff Swan steps up right behind her and puts the gun through the bars and to the back of the Queen’s head.

“Let her go,” the Sheriff snarls, low and deadly, and the Queen’s face is like marble. “Now, Regina, or I swear to God I will hurt you.”

The pressure on Belle’s heart vanishes and she staggers back, falling to sit on the low bed, as the Queen lowers her hands, glaring and furious. There’s blood on the Queen’s hands and Belle looks down to see blood on her shirt, her own, again, and she struggles to breathe.

Rumpelstiltskin is there, by her side, in an instant, and clasping her hands. “Was that really necessary, dear?”

Belle looks at the Queen, who is staring at them, broken and shocked and defeated in this one small battle. She looks at the Sheriff, who is staring at them both, but who is wearing a new look of understanding and realisation. She looks at Jefferson, only paces behind the Sheriff, grinning and proud. She looks at Rumpelstiltskin with his false face and his worry, and she leans close to rest her brow against his. “Yes.”

 

_______________________________________________

 

 

Emma’s world has been turned on its head by two people she thought were crazy and one she thought was a con-man in a suit.

Fairytales are real. Henry’s book is right. Mary Margaret is her mother.

The world is going to pieces around them. Not literally, although she’s pretty sure she can see the cracks, but things are changing, and changing fast. It started the minute Regina was shoved into the cell, as if a gust of fresh air rushed through the whole town.

Gold is the first thing to change as he helps Belle across the room. He dropped his stick when he ran to her side, but now, he’s walking steadily, without a limp, and there’s a spring in his step that wasn’t there before. He looks at Emma and she sees scales and gleaming red eyes and a grin that is - genuinely - impish.

“What…?”

“It’s breaking, dearie,” he says.

“It’s breaking?” Jefferson echoes, staring at him. “Grace!”

“She’s outside, with Henry,” Emma says, still staring at Gold as Jefferson races for the door, his face alight with joy. “What the hell are you?”

Gold giggles - actually giggles - and bows flamboyantly. “Rumpelstiltskin at your service, Princess Emma,” he says. He tilts his head and looks at her. “And it looks like you’ve done your job well, Sheriff.”

“My job? My job is making you look like a lizard?”

He chuckles and Belle shakes her head with a fond smile. “You broke the curse, dearie,” he says. “Why do you think you came here in the first place? You were the one who was to take away her happy endings and return ours.”

Emma really does wonder if someone spiked her coffee, but she’s seen too much in the last half hour, not least Regina with her fist up to the wrist in Belle’s chest. “So we’re all fairytale critters? Really?”

Rumpelstiltskin laughs. “Oh, Sheriff, you have no idea just how many of us there are,” he says gleefully. He offers Belle his arm, and shoots a malevolent smile at Regina, who is sitting silent and blank in the cell. “I think we should leave her to bask in the ruins. There are reunions to be had, after all.”

“You’ve got family?” she says doubtfully, and for a moment, his smile softens.

“No, Miss Swan,” he says, “but you do.”

Family.

She stares at him. “I do?”

“You do,” he says, and his eyes dance. “I’m sure they’ll be on the way. Run along, dear.”

Family.

Emma is out of the office and into the street before she even realises what that means. Henry slams into her hugging her triumphantly, and grinning like it’s Christmas. “You did it! You beat the evil Queen! The curse is breaking!”

“So I’ve been told,” Emma says, laughing.

“Emma!”

She whirls around and sees Mary Margaret running towards her. Not in her usual, half-jog, but running, full-pelt, arms and legs racing like she’s used to running across the world, and Emma staggers as her mother crashes into her and hugs her like it’s the end of the world.

Emma’s never known what a mother’s hug was really meant to feel like, but Mary Margaret seems to be ready to make up for lost time, and her arms are warm and close and hugging her so tightly she can barely breathe.

“Mary…”

“No, no,” Mary Margaret says, pulling back and smiling. She’s still the same person, but there’s strength and bravery there that Emma’s never seen before. “I’m Snow White. I’m Snow again.” She hugs Emma again. “And you’re my girl. My beautiful girl.”

Emma stares at her. She’s known for a long time that Mary Margaret is the closest thing she’s ever had to family, and now, it’s fact. It’s true. It’s blood. And after twenty-eight years of fruitless searching, she has her mom back. Emma doesn’t cry. It’s not her thing. But right now, she’s got tears and they’re streaming down her face, and she’s hugging Ma… Snow White and she can’t breathe, can’t speak.

It only gets worse when David arrives. David who isn’t anything like David anymore. David, who is smiling like he’s the happiest man in the world. David who whirls her off her feet like she’s a kid. David who kisses Snow White as if she’s the very oxygen that he needs to live. David who isn’t David at all, who is smiling and confident and pretty much glowing with happiness.

“Today is a good day,” Jefferson declares. He has his own little limpet, a tiny, brown-haired girl, clinging to his waist and his arms are so close around her that she’s barely visible.

“Best day,” Henry crows happily.

“Worth it?” Belle says from less than a dozen paces away. She’s not speaking to Henry or to Emma. Instead, she’s speaking to Rumpelstiltskin. No. She’s speaking to Gold. He’s pale, and he looks human again, but he’s smiling and it’s a genuine, happy smile, the first Emma’s ever seen on his face.

“Worth it,” he agrees.


End file.
